Thursday, 25 September 2014

20% of ‘right to be forgotten’ requests concern an image

French start-up Forget.me, which helps consumers remove information about themselves from Google, has said almost 20 per cent of Irish requests under the “right to be forgotten ruling” concern an image.

The European Court of Justice ruled in May that individuals have the right, in certain circumstances, to ask search engines to remove links with personal information about them.

Established by online reputation agency Reputation VIP, Forget.me helps users through the process of asking Google to remove information.

Since setting up in June, the start-up has received applications requesting the removal of almost 300 links from Irish people.

Three-quarters of applications were refused by Google, as they were “deliberately placed in public”, concerned another person, or were still relevant.

Some 8.5 per cent of requests were refused as the person seeking removal of information was the author of that information and could change it themselves on social media.

Forget.me said 18 per cent of Irish requests concerned an image, and Ireland is the ninth country in the number of requests, with 294 URL removals. In comparison, the UK ranked first with 3,700 requests for URL removals.

Requests declined

Overall, Google decli- ned 59 per cent of requests submitted by Forget.me seeking the removal of information on behalf of people throughout Europe.

This is based on more than 15,000 URLs sent to Google via Forget.me, from 30 countries.

Within one week of launching on June 24th, 13,000 people had registered on Forget.me and submitted 1,106 “right to be forgotten” applications requesting the removal of a total of 5,218 links.

Invasions of privacy, defamation and insult represented just over 50 per cent of all Google content removal requests.